Computer System Architecture Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Correct answer: tightly coupled system

A multiprocessor system has two or more processors sharing the same memory, bus and clock under a single operating system. Processors that share memory in this way are described as tightly coupled. A loosely coupled system is one whose machines have their own memory and communicate over a network - that is a distributed or clustered system, not a multiprocessor.

Answer: B

Correct answer: parallel clusters

Parallel clusters allow more than one host to access the same data on shared storage at the same time, which needs a special distributed file system to arbitrate the accesses. A Beowulf cluster is a commodity-hardware compute cluster and is not defined by shared data access.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Replacing processor with faster version

Throughput is work completed per unit time, so it rises when the machine gets through each task faster or can run more tasks at once. A faster processor does the first directly. Changing the operating system, the cache or the I/O may help in particular cases, but the processor is the general answer the definition points to.

Answer: C

Correct answer: DMA

Direct Memory Access lets an I/O device transfer a block of data straight to or from memory without the CPU handling each word, which is why it is the standard high-speed transfer technique. CAD and CAM are application areas, not transfer methods.

Answer: D

Correct answer: Handshaking

In handshaking each unit sends a control signal to acknowledge the other - a request from the sender and a reply from the receiver - so neither has to assume the other is ready. A strobe uses a single pulse and gets no acknowledgement in return, which is the distinction being tested.

Answer: C

Correct answer: Through put

Throughput measures how much work is completed in a given period - jobs per hour, transactions per second. Response time and execution time measure how long one piece of work takes, which is the opposite way of looking at the same machine: a system can improve throughput by running many tasks at once without making any single one faster.